


Be Gay Do Crimes

by wyrmy



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Autistic Aziraphale (Good Omens), Childhood Friends, Chubby Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Has ADHD (Good Omens), Dyslexic Crowley (Good Omens), Friends to Lovers, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hell (or its in-universe equivalent is also Terrible, Homophobia, M/M, Secret Relationship, Teenage Awkwardness, Trans Aziraphale (Good Omens), Trans Crowley (Good Omens), Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrmy/pseuds/wyrmy
Summary: In The Beginning, there was an angel ( or rather a small boy named after one) and a demon ( or rather a small boy who wasn't always well-behaved) and a walled garden.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the biggest thing I have ever tried to write. It's an attempt to write an AU that's as close to canon as possible, where the characters know each other "from the beginning", where my interpretation of their canonical relationships to gender and sexuality are stated outright, where, like their canon counterparts, the characters must escape their deeply unpleasant families.  
> I have made several decisions in how I write these characters as trans men. Most importantly, I have decided that the narrative itself will never misgender or deadname anyone, even though characters in the story sometimes do. I thought for a long time about how to handle this matter, because, as a non binary person, I am not an authority, nor am I infallible. I didn't want to erase or hide the fact that with the narrative being what it is, its fairly likely the characters would experience transphobia, but I did not want to write something voyeuristic, where trans people suffer gratuitously for the titillation of a largely cis audience.  
> If any trans people wish to critique or discuss how I have handled this matter, I invite them to do so, though there is no obligation.

August 2002

The Crowleys next door were not the right sort of people; that was the first thing that Aziraphale ever heard about them. The paint on their house was peeling and the yard was unkempt, and these were things which Brought Down the Property Values .

And then there were the children, who constituted the Crowley family’s second embarrassment in the community. Their clothes didn’t fit them properly and they were often none too clean when they were seen playing in the road like hooligans or when they took themselves in packs to the local primary school. Every respectable person was horrified both by their hygiene and their sheer number. (Aziraphale, watching from behind the net curtains in his mother’s bedroom one morning, had counted four on his pudgy fingers, but when he’d mentioned this to his brother Gabriel, in conjunction with the fact that he, Gabriel, was eldest of eight, he got a talking to for his pains.)

It was little wonder, then, that though the Crowleys were next door, and though their back garden, like Aziraphale’s, overlooked a charming bit of Old English Woodland, he never met any of them until he was five, the summer before he would join his siblings as a schoolboy.

Aziraphale was by nature solitary, preferring the stories he whispered to himself about his toys to the company of his siblings, so when he was old enough, he soon found it possible to simply slip away, out of his bedroom, down the back stairs, and out into the garden. Most of the summer it was there that he lurked, in any patch of shade or hidden corner he could find as the long day shifted the shadows around like pieces on a chess board, letting his toy dinosaurs engage in surprisingly heated family disputes by the trunk of the rhododendron. 

Though he loved his mother’s garden for how beautifully planted it was and how full of convenient hidey-holes for a small boy who didn’t wish to be seen, he was endlessly fascinated with the outside world. And so, when one day in august when he was woken by rain drumming on the roof, he grabbed his mac directly after breakfast and walked to the far end where the masonry had come down a little, without giving himself a moment to think about it. The masonry was frightening to him, both because he was small and the rocks were slippery with moss, and because there was an air, somehow, of creepiness about the place, as if the wall had been breached by an evil spirit. But Aziraphale launched himself at the rocks after only the briefest hesitation, and found that they were neither haunted nor particularly hard to scale and was soon over them and on the Other Side.

He set his little jaw and squared his narrow shoulders and took a couple of paces into the dark and forbidding woodland, which turned out to be sparse enough that he could easily keep an eye on his house. It was very still there, but for the rain, and he found himself relaxing incrementally as he walked, glancing over his shoulder every now and again. Within a short while, he came to a stream and crouched down beside it, admiring the way the clear water flowed over the rocks and nudging it to ripples occasionally with his booted foot.

“Hello,” came a child’s voice from behind him. “Who’re you?” he turned to see a boy, looking no older than him frowning down at him from a tree trunk, and, worryingly, wearing no mac.

“I’m Aziraphale,” he said. “I live…” he pointed to his house which glowed white through the dimness of the wood.

“That’s funny,” said the boy. “You don’t look like one of those Saint Johns .” 

“It’s pronounced “sin jin”, actually.”

“That sounds weird. Saint john is nicer.”

“It’s called after Saint John the Baptist, I think. He baptised people.” The boy took this information with the deference it deserved, which was not much. “Who are you?”  
“My name’s… Crowley,” the boy said. “You can call me Crowley. Don’t like my first name,” he added.

“I didn’t either. Used to think it was a girl’s name, till my sister explained that since I’m named after an angel, my name’s gen- gen- not a girl’s or a boy’s name.” he beamed momentarily at having made such a good connection, then clapped his hands over his mouth in horror.

“You not a girl then?” said Crowley, getting off his stump. “s’okay if you’re not.”

Aziraphale couldn’t trust himself to speak, so great was his fear at having betrayed his greatest secret , so he nodded. 

“Well I’m not,” Crowley said and swaggered toward him where he stood by the stream. This seemed evident to Aziraphale but he didn’t press the issue. “Why are you out here anyway? Thought all your lot were afraid of the outside.”

“We are. I was curious, though. I climbed over the garden wall to see the, the woods and everything. Do you think that was wrong?”

“Don’t think anyone in your family ever does something wrong.”

“Oh. Oh thank you. I’ve been worried about it.” Crowley looked surprised for some reason.

Just then the heavens opened and it began, truly, to rain. The noise of it on the ground and in the trees was thunderous and poor Crowley, not even wearing so much as a jacket, was soaked through in seconds, and the way his hair clung to his head made him look even younger than he was. Aziraphale started taking off his mac as soon as the rain started and handed it over to Crowley, who was snarling and wiping the water off his face.

“It’s pink, I hope that’s alright.”

Crowley blinked at him and glanced between his face and the proffered mac, as if he suspected that this was a cruel trick. 

“Why would you give this to me?” said Crowley.

Aziraphale shrugged. “Because otherwise you’d get wet.” Crowley took the pale pink mac, and slid it on, slicking his wet hair up off his forehead, wearing a frown of deep distrust all the while. “I had better be going,” said Aziraphale. “I expect my siblings will be wondering where I go to.” He gave Crowley a cheery wave and trotted back to his house.  
No-one had noticed that Aziraphale was missing, though he did get a dressing-down over his soaking clothes, and an even bigger one when he claimed to have misplaced his mac. Sitting in the bath that afternoon and looking down over the Crowley house’s roof he felt the peculiar warm feeling of having made a friend.

(No-one had noticed that Crowley was missing, either, nor did anyone in his house notice the new mac in the closet, until his sister Bea stole it and kept it for herself, for all that it was too small.)

Aziraphale ventured into the woods again a few days later, and then a week after that, but no Crowleys did he espy. 

It was not long after that Aziraphale’s mother dressed him in an itchy skirt and an uncomfortable little tie and sent him off to school with his siblings. School was frightening and overwhelming. Aziraphale soon learnt that he was not allowed to go off on his own and that the other children thought his anxiety was comical. The teacher told him to sit still in a sharp tone that reminded him of his parents and he wanted nothing more than to run away, but he was too afraid to do it. When, halfway through his first day, he spotted a scowling and black-clad child almost hidden in the corner, his relief was incandescent.

“Hello Crowley,” he cried. “I’m so happy to see you!”

Then he realized what he had done. He froze. Crowley was supposed to be a secret. Crowley slunk over to him.

“Meet me in the woods after school today,” hissed Crowley in a loud stage whisper. Then he winked and Aziraphale thought this looked incredibly cool. 

When the unfairly long school day was over and they were in the woods, Aziraphale asked the question that was weighing on his mind.

“Are we friends, do you think?”

“Sure,” said Crowley, and returned Aziraphale’s sunny smile. And so they were. 

That very night, Aziraphale’s sister Michael barged into his room and asked to know why he was rumoured to be friends with one of the Crowley children. He denied it, of course, and went back to having the little toy pony in his right hand repeatedly kick the large horse is his left. 

It wasn’t until several days later that he realized that at school Crowley answered, though grudgingly, to a girly name that didn’t at all suit him. "That explains it", he thought. "He’s like me."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this one day early, because i got an unexpected shift at work tomorrow. Next chapter will be on a Sunday again.

November 2002

Crowley’s seat was one row to the left and three seats behind Aziraphale’s. As he walked past Aziraphale’s place he whispered: “you going to the woods after school?” there wasn’t time for Aziraphale to answer before Crowley was gone, but he knew if he nodded once Crowley was seated, he’d understand. Aziraphale kicked his legs under the desk, anxious already to go play with his best friend. 

April 2003

Aziraphale was lying peacefully on his back on the woods, his eyes barely open as he stared up at the trees above him. The sunlight shone through the leaves, sifting them between shades of green as the wind moved them so gently and so far away. He could stay like this forever, he thought. 

“Hey, Aziraphale! What’re you doing?” it was Crowley’s voice, an energized half-shout, still exited from his busy day at school.

“I’m waiting for you, silly,” he said, sitting up. “I nicked us some biscuits to share!”

“Really? You stole them?”

“From my house, yes.” Aziraphale did not say that Crowley was thin and sometimes peaky-looking, and that he worried for him. Crowley was too cool for anyone to worry about him. Aziraphale did anyway.

They sat on the bare earth and shared the little bag of biscuits and Aziraphale secretly felt very glad that he had so cleverly tricked Crowley into letting himself be taken care of. Where had that thought come from?

February 2004

Report card for Aziraphale St. John 

Year 2 Instructor: Miss Harris

English: A Student is a strong reader with an advanced vocabulary. A little too excitable in class discussions, has an unfortunate tendency to yell. The student’s observations are generally correct, however. Spelling and grammar both far exceed expectations.

Mathematics: F Student cannot reliably remember how many fingers there are on a human hand. All attempts to teach basic concepts have failed. Extensive tutoring recommended, but unlikely to remediate the situation.

Science: B Excellent comprehension of advanced concepts. Struggles with rote memorization. Tries to talk about snakes all the time.

Phys Ed: C Student is un-athletic and frequently bored. Has a tendency to try to sneak away when the class is outdoors. No team spirit whatsoever.

History: A Student is engaged and retains information well. Fewer excitable class interruptions would be ideal.

Notes: Aziraphale seems to have no friends other than [his] siblings, whom [he] follows around the schoolyard without talking to. This marked social deficit along with [his] fractured skills in the classroom suggests that a consultation with a child psychologist might be in order.

Report card for [Anthony] Crowley

English: F Student is unmotivated and has attitude problems. Makes up imaginary words instead of reading aloud and hands in unfinished homework.

Mathematics: C Student displays an acceptable level of comprehension but shows no interest in ever committing workings to paper.

Science: B Occasionally brilliant insights and real enthusiasm during in-class work but little or no interest in completing readings or take-home assignments.

Phys Ed: B Student is energetic and fit, if dyspraxic. Makes a real effort.

History: F Student does not do complete any coursework. Draws instead of listening in class.

Notes: [Anthony] shows significant attitude issues which prevent [him] from being productive. More discipline at home might prove a great benefit. In the schoolyard, [he] is observed to encourage roughhousing among the children and occasionally get into fights [him]self.

Crowley and Aziraphale grew up neglected and a bit wild, Crowley being forgettable when compared to his siblings and Aziraphale being inferior. No teacher’s suspicions about Aziraphale’s autism were ever followed up, as doing so would bring shame upon the family. He was simply exhorted to “try harder” instead. 

Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t even acknowledge each other at school, even as their friendship bloomed in private. Aziraphale discovered reading, and simultaneously, he discovered telling Crowley about whatever he happened to be reading, which was an even more thrilling pastime. Crowley, whose undiagnosed dyslexia was read as defiance coming as it did from a child so dirty, poorly clothed, and androgynous, read as little as possible, although he worked his way painstakingly through books on the natural world and got in trouble with his siblings for hogging the telly for nature programs. Aziraphale was well-fed and pretty, compliant and blank-faced, with a secret tendency towards defiance, towards book-stealing and gossip, lighting things on fire with a magnifying glass and silent, wrathful tears.

The pair of them snuck off into the woods together at every opportunity, constructing elaborate games or doing their homework together, for all that Aziraphale put up a token resistance to the idea of cheating. In the summer they would walk together to the next town over, where they hung around in stores making fun of the clothes and got themselves labelled a pair of hellions. Aziraphale began experimenting, gingerly, with shoplifting and Crowley with pranks.

Crowley cut his own hair ruthlessly short over his family’s filthy bathroom sink, spiking the top with his father’s hair product. He wore shapeless black clothes with patches and safety pins on them and affected a sullen glare that he directed towards nearly everyone and in this way passed as a boy before he really understood that was what he was trying to do. Aziraphale, for his part, gave off a baffling double-exposure of femininity and effeminacy. His parents didn’t permit him to cut his hair but for split ends and never let him wear trousers, and indeed dressed him in all manner of frills which he tolerated with the manly grumpiness of a Scottish terrier with a bow in its fur. He was, however, limp-wristed, soft-voiced and wiggly, prone to blushing and cattiness. In his bedroom, alone at night, he did push ups.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a homophobic slur used in this chapter, as well as several scenes of drinking. This is probably also the chapter where I'm likely to have put a foot wrong in terms of writing about trans people's experiences. let me reiterate that i am happy to receive criticism about this.

December 2010

“Merry Christmas, Crowley,” whispered Aziraphale.

“Merry Christmas, Aziraphale.” They were sitting on the nasty old carpet in Crowley’s bedroom, Crowley having managed to smuggle Aziraphale in for their annual Christmas celebration, which according to its ancient and well-known tradition, took place on whatever day they thought they were likely to get away with it. Crowley’s tiny room was illuminated only by the ambient light coming in from the window, which had become less and less as the sun sank in the sky. They carefully clinked their cups together and mutually winced at the acidity of the wine.

“Why’d you steal this awful stuff, anyway?” blustered Crowley, eyes crinkled in a way that Aziraphale found utterly adorable. 

“I heard mum talking about it, I suppose. I wanted to share something special with you, to celebrate.”

“Does that make this is Christmas present?”

“It’s not a very good one.”

“It’s the best,” said Crowley, and Aziraphale beamed at him.

They sat in silence for a little while, both taking a second sip of wine before both setting their glasses aside.

“I’ve got a present for you, too. Sort of,” said Crowley, looking down and blushing very fiercely. “I mean, it’s not really. And you don’t have to accept it, if you don’t want. It’s just, um,”

“Yes?” asked Aziraphale who was feeling a little worried about what this thing might be. 

“Uhhh I, well, neicndk, dicnue, I like you.”

“You like me? You mean like like?”

“Like like,” Said Crowley, eyes now squeezed tight due to the flood of ashamed tears that were suddenly trying to escape them. He was about to make a long speech about how important Aziraphale’s friendship was to him and how he didn’t want Aziraphale to feel any pressure, any at all, and so on and so on, when Aziraphale out his soft hands on Crowley’s face and tilted it up before kissing him on the mouth. It was not the most artful kiss in the history of kisses, nor the most passionate, for it was closed-mouthed and brief. But Aziraphale sat back and stared at Crowley with his eyes huge and glittering.

“Ooh my goodness! Oh Crowley, will you be my boyfriend?” he suddenly realized that he and Crowley had never actually talked about gender since the day they met, and that Crowley might prefer to be a girlfriend instead. The thought made something sink unhappily in his chest, for some reason. “Or is boyfriend the right word?” he added, trying to hide how desperately he hoped that it was.

“Yeaaaa. I’ll be your boyfriend, angel, if you’ll be mine,” said Crowley, equal parts smug and nervous as only a desperately besotted 13-year-old boy can be.

“I would love to be your boyfriend,” whispered Aziraphale, and hugged him.

Aziraphale and Crowley met regularly in secret, in the woods, in quiet parts of the school, or in town. They did all the things that madly infatuated teenage boys like to do, alongside their more traditional activities of ranting to each other about whatever they were currently obsessed with, and causing minor havoc. 

November 2012

Their relationship felt so natural, so drenched in the sweet nostalgia of childhood, that is didn’t really occur to Aziraphale that others might perceive it as taboo until they had already been “seeing each other” as he termed it for two years. Some girls, hoping no doubt to humiliate Aziraphale, asked him one day if he had a crush on anyone. He was not foolish enough to answer in the affirmative, as the girls’ objective was probably to shame any such person by confronting them with Aziraphale’s fatness and weirdness, but he couldn’t help the glance he shot towards his boyfriend, lounging in a particularly attractive way at his desk.

“[Him]?” one of the girls gasped, following his line of sight. “Are you some kind of lesbian or something?”

Aziraphale looked at her open-mouthed. It was true that he regularly forgot that others perceived Crowley as a girl, and it was true that he didn’t think of himself as one either, but it was possible, he supposed, that he was a sort of lesbian, lacking any other term.

“Ummm,” he said

“You are!” crowed one of the girls. “Makes sense really, since you’re so fat, that you’d be a dyke. No boy would ever date you.” Aziraphale tried not to listen to their laughter. He had research to do. 

Every lunch hour for the next week he spent in the library, first devouring every book they had on LGBT identities, and then searching online. He made copious notes on sheaves of loose-leaf paper that he concealed in his clothes for safety. In the end, the conclusion was obvious. He met Crowley in the woods one afternoon, papers clutched against his chest, waiting nervously like some cold-war spy dropping off confidential documents. He passed them over quickly, as if they were dangerous to hold for too long, and then awkwardly looked the other way as Crowley skimmed the documents. The most important bits had been done in larger writing, in Aziraphale’s best impression of a dyslexic-friendly font, so Crowley saw those first. 

“A lot of it’s background, not quite as important, as you know, the um, the, the…”

“So we’re the same way, that’s what you’re saying?”

“I think we always have been.”

“We’re…”

“Gay…”

“Transgender…”

“Boys? I thought it would sound better out loud, somehow.”

“Yeah, me too, Aziraphale. It just feels weird.”

“I’m going to give you a hug now and then I think I’m going to go home and have a little panic.”

“Sounds good. Ill keep the papers, yeah?”

“Please,” said Aziraphale, his voice muffled in Crowley’s coat

“Thanks for doing this for us. We kinda knew, really, but having it all in writing makes it real, somehow.”

“Hmm,” answered Aziraphale, still muffled. “My family’s going to kill me if they find out. Seeing you is bad enough, they’d already kill me for that. They’ll kill me twice if they think I’m, I’m accusing god of making a mistake.” He was breathless with horror.

“Hey, hey, they’re not going to do that. First of all because you’re smart enough to beat them, you know that, and secondly I’m here with you. Besides, how do you know god didn’t plan for you to be… you know, transgender?”

“It’s not her I’m worried about. I hope you’re right.”

“We’ll get you out of this, just you wait and see.”

It wasn’t two weeks before Crowley, hunched inside his jacket and under Aziraphale’s umbrella in the dripping woodland, dropped his metaphorical bomb.

“I’ve been thinking. I’d like to, er, come out, maybe. To some people, anyway. You wouldn’t mind?” he twisted his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder to look up at him.  
“No, if course not. I could only be happy for you, darling.”

“I want to change my name to Anthony,” mumbled Crowley.

“Anthony,” repeated Aziraphale, brows furrowed.

“You don’t like it?”

“I’ll get used to it.” He gave Crowley’s shoulder a squeeze. 

“Will you be changing your name?”

“I’ve always been told it was gender-neutral, so I’m not sure ill really feel the need. Besides. I’ve gotten used to hearing you say it.”

“You flirt.”

“Only for you.”

July 2015

“I can’t cope with this when I’m drunk,” slurred Aziraphale. Somewhere in the squelching depths of his drunken mind he knew that the wine had been entirely, entirely his idea. He chose not to think about it.

“S’not the end of the world, angel, you’ll see,” said Crowley, trying to pat Aziraphale on the back and missing. “Look,” he continued, “lots of couples have long-distance relationships. We can do it, too. I’ll come to visit you, and I’ll write letters n’ seal ‘em with loving kisses an’ all that bodice-ripper stuff you like so much.”

“It’s not as easy as just going for a walk in the woods and happening to run into you, my dear. What if they read my mail or have me stay with a “family friend” who writes and tells them everything I do?”

“We’re going to be careful. It’s not as if you’re going to be living with your family forever.”

Aziraphale looked morose. “Don’t know, sometimes. I might do.”

“Well you’re planning to come out, aren’t you?”

“They’ll never let me.”

“Here’s what we’ll do. We’re going to get them to give you as much money as possible, and when it’s safe we’ll live together. We’ll be alright, you’ll see.”  
Aziraphale frowned at him skeptically.

“Okay. Look. When I’m much less drunk, we’ll work it out properly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the hardest chapter to write, and i'm still not entirely happy with it, but if i didn't post it today, it would never go up! anyway! i also updated the chapter count because i reassessed how much material i had written fnuonorw


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates today! content warnings for fatphobia, transphobia, and unpleasant family dynamics.

October 2015

Aziraphale was woken by a loud noise. He sat up with a start, head cocked, trying to puzzle out what the noise could have been. Only a few seconds passed before he heard it again. Something hitting his window.

He got up and slunk cautiously across his room and towards the window, dragging his blanket protectively over his shoulder as he went. Just as he reached the window, another projectile struck it and he flinched backwards. There was dark figure on the grass outside, crouched on the ground with thin, prehensile limbs stretched outwards, feeling at or fumbling against the earth. The figure abruptly shot upwards into a standing position, one bony arm winding backwards to throw something, but Aziraphale had managed wrestle his window open.

“Crowley!” he hissed in a loud stage whisper, leaning out the window. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting you! What else would I be doing?”

“People will hear us! You don’t want that any more than I do.”

“I told you I’d come and visit when you were away at university, so I’m here.”

There was a brief pause.

“I’ll be right down and let you in, don’t make any more noise.”

Aziraphale, with more stress and agitation than was normal, fought his way into his tartan robe and bundled himself down the stairs as fast as his legs would carry him. He unlocked the door with shaking hands, half-believing that he was still asleep and dreaming. Crowley gazed up at him front step, however, and Aziraphale grabbed his jacket and dragged him into a passionate kiss. 

“I’ve thought of you every second since we’ve been parted,” Aziraphale gasped against Crowley’s face.

“Me too, angel,” mumbled Crowley as he shifted them into a hug which lasted a long time. 

Aziraphale took Crowley by the hand and wordlessly led lead him back up to his room. 

“It’s not safe for you to be here,” whispered Aziraphale, when some further frenzied snogging had been accomplished.

“You can’t go around telling me where you’re going to be living and expect me not to visit. It’s been two months, angel, I’m actually dying.”

“I shouldn’t have done that, I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, stepping out of Crowley’s arms. “I don’t know why I told you. I suppose I…”

“You hoped I’d come to find you, and I did, so stop worrying. I’m going to leave very early in the morning, so no-one will ever be the wiser.” Aziraphale bullied him down onto the narrow bed and there was very little talking after that.

“You’ve cut your hair!” said Crowley, running has hands through the same and causing to frizz distressingly. 

“I’ve not been able to cut it as much as I’d like, really,” explained Aziraphale as he pulled back slightly. “I would have gotten something very short indeed if I wasn’t going home for the winter holiday. Um.” He feigned nonchalance. “It’s quite unfortunate that you’ve arrived at night because I’ve been dressing rather differently of late.”

Crowley’s jaw fell open. “You mean…?”

Aziraphale sucked his lower lip into his mouth and nodded.

“Please. You’ve got to show me.”

“Close your eyes,” Aziraphale said, shrugging off his robe.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen.”

“You’ll want to get the full effect at once.” Crowley closed his eyes just before the table light clicked on and he waited, watching the shadows pass over his eyelids and listening to the rustle of cloth. 

“They’re all second-hand , and frankly don’t fit very well I think. It’s not as if I have much experience buying menswear. So don’t get your hopes up too high. You can look, now.’  
Aziraphale was a vision. His hair was tied into a masculine little ponytail at the very base of his skull, he was wearing a tweed jacket, corduroy trousers, what looked like a velveteen waistcoat, a pocket watch, and a tartan bowtie. 

Crowley was totally robbed of speech. He gaped, mouth opening and shutting like a fish. 

“What do you think,” asked Aziraphale, in a timid voice.

“You are,” managed Crowley, “the sexiest man who has ever lived. I have been in love with you since I was five years old and you have never looked so beautiful to me, so uh, I think it’s very, very, very nice. Actually, I think I need you to come over here right now.”

At five the next morning, Aziraphale shook Crowley gently awake and sent him off with some muffins and a kiss before anyone in the house woke up. 

December 2015 

Aziraphale adjusted his collar in the mirror for the umpteenth time. This shirt had never fit very well and the weight gain he’d been experiencing recently didn’t help. He was dressed for the yearly dinner that had become something of a tradition in his family since Gabriel, the first of his older siblings, had gone to university ten years before. This would be the first time he was among those returning and he was feeling a certain amount of trepidation about the mandatory de-briefing that would undergo. Aziraphale was firmly established as the black sheep of his family and the questions he would be asked were doubtless going to be pointed and mocking. After months of being (comparatively) appreciated and respected in the university environment, coming home was an even bigger adjustment than he’d anticipated, even without the pain of having to leave all his new clothes with a friend and present feminine. It was a necessary evil, though, since his parents had gone through his siblings’ luggage in the past, when they’d come home, and indeed Aziraphale had been enlisted to help more than once. 

Speaking of which. Aziraphale had kept his bags with him ever since he had returned that afternoon, but in the chaos of an evening meal for ten people it was likely someone would be able to slip into his room and do a search. He rooted about in his suitcase until he located the pay-as-you-go phone that Crowley had helped him get the last time he’d visited. There were three new messages.

 Good luck with the family tonight love u

 Hope you had a nice train ride angel lol

 Let me know when u wanna meet yeah?

Aziraphale typed: “I had a very pleasant trip. Thank you for all your good wishes. Please don’t text me until tomorrow, as I will be around family most of tonight. I hope to see you then. Love, Aziraphale.”

Then he kissed the phone and slipped it into the inner pocket of his sweater, so that it rested over his heart, where any self-respecting love letter should be worn. He straightened his shirt once more and went downstairs, back straight like a soldier.

His sisters mostly ignored him as he helped out with cooking and then serving the enormous meal to his brothers and father, who said: “well, you look like you’ve eaten well enough at university, Aziraphale,” while he brought in a tray. Aziraphale felt the phone in his pocket swing as he bent to put the tray down and smiled to himself.

“What’s that? You think it’s funny? Your health is a very serious business and don’t you forget it.”

“No, sir,” said Aziraphale. He turned back to the kitchen, grinding his teeth. He and Crowley had a plan, a very good plan, and it involved not getting into any trouble or upsetting anyone. It also involved, he reflected with no small amount of pleasure, bleeding his family for all he could get.

He sat smiling and still at the table and picked at his food as little as he could bear to. If he was quiet, if he was nice, they would leave him alone and he could spend the meal daydreaming about Crowley instead of getting bothered. He weathered Question Period well enough. No, he didn’t have any feminist professors. No he wasn’t hearing any heretical ideas, nor would he credit them if he did. He was going to church. He didn’t have many friends. Why didn’t he have many friends? He shrugged gracefully. You know me. Shy.   
When he had endured some more comments about how good the food must be at university, and a second round of pointed questions about his teachers’ political leanings, the topic of conversation mercifully shifted. It meandered along various paths which Aziraphale totally ignored in favour of contemplating what he and Crowley might get up to the next day. He was rudely jolted from his thoughts by the mention of a name he recognized. 

“Excuse me?” he said.

“I was just saying have you heard the rumour about one of the Crowley children. Honestly, keep up, Aziraphale.”

“What’s the rumour?”

“That one of them is a transgender. The youngest one- what’s [his] name.”

“The really skinny redhead kid? Always thought there was something off about that one. Do you know [him], Aziraphale?”

“Um… not particularly.”

“The two of you must have been in the same classes at school.”

“I suppose we were. We didn’t speak very much.”

“Well I never looked for better from the Crowleys. Especially from that freak of a child. Given the whole family is a bunch of godless heathens, it’s no wonder their creepiest child would go on to defy God in such a perverted way.”

Aziraphale realized when the conversation was over that his fingernails were digging painfully into his palms because of how tightly his fists were clenched. He stared at some point on the table cloth as the image of himself punching everyone at the table played itself out a hundred times in his mind’s eye. He felt like his whole body was trembling with fierce, protective rage.

“You alright, Aziraphale?”

“I’m sorry. I’m just a bit… distracted, I suppose.” He smiled. It tasted like bile. “Three months down, three and a half more years to go”, he thought.

Crowley visited as much as he was able trough the four long years of Aziraphale’s degree. He came at night and left before dawn and every time he did so, his heart broke a little, as did Aziraphale’s, although neither of them let it show. When Aziraphale came home for the holidays they still snuck off the woods together and went on little day-trips where they walked hand-in-hand in the street like people with nothing to fear. The plan played itself out in secret, like clockwork, like a machine. Like a magic trick which had no right to be real, it played itself out.


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters posted today, so go back and read chapter 4 if you haven't already.

March 2019

Aziraphale was waiting at the train station. He felt like some sort of Downton abbey LARPer, checking his pocket watch regularly in between nervously scanning for Crowley. He had just got his burner phone out of his pocket to see if Crowley had messaged him when he heard a voice shout “ Angel!” and he felt someone barrel into him at great speed. Crowley flung his arms around Aziraphale, who returned the hug before lifting his boyfriend off the ground in a brief twirl. 

“I’ve missed you,” he said, somewhat out of breath.

“Yeah? You’ve missed me?” said Crowley, standing very close. “I’m so glad. It been four really awful years.”

“Yes it has.”

“When you texted, it sounded like you’d… sorted everything.”

“I have, I think. My family has no access to my banking, I have a new cellphone that’s not on their plan, my last little bit of uni is all payed for, I’ve got a nice little nest egg saved up, I’ve cut my hair-”

“I noticed that. It looks fantastic.”

“And, um. I’ve been to the doctor.” He looked suddenly anxious.

“My gorgeous angel,” said Crowley, and kissed him, very briefly, on the mouth.

“There’s a bit of a wait, and several hoops to jump through, as you know, but the wheels are in motion.” 

Crowley was biting his lip. “We made it,” he said. “And they never suspected?”

“Well, since I appeared to be spending my allowance every month, they did increase it every time I asked. They never found out about my job or my other bank account or any of it. You’re brilliant, my darling.”

“And so are you, to be able to pull it off.”

“I texted Gabriel. Just to let him know about… everything. I think they’ll just want to leave me alone and forget about me but…”

“I’ll read it for you. I won’t make you read whatever he’s said. You never have to think about any of them again, if you don’t want to. And then… I think we’re going to need to go house-hunting.”

Aziraphale picked up one of Crowley’s bags and they went, arm in arm, out of the garden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's it! I hope you liked my little bagatelle of a story. If you like my writing, you should know that i still have several irons in the fire, particularly one of my other human AUs which is in need of a second chapter. Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! the story is all written out, and just needs editing. I will try to post one chapter every Sunday, with the exception of the last two chapters being posted together because the last one is so short. I have several other wips on the go, including my other au, which I will try to post soon as well. :)


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